There have been plenty of blog pieces on what the President's acceptance speech should sound like. I have my own thoughts.

The Presdient should come out on his special theater in the round pedestal and accept the nomination, and say that in wartime, the selection of commander in chief is especially important, and what matters is the here and now, not 35 years ago. Here and now, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are in harm's way, defending this nation, and he is proud of them, and proud of their service. He should walk out into the audience, and say something very respectful of General Tommy Franks, who will be sitting in the audience, and thank him for his years of service to the country, from Vietnam onward. And Tommy Franks should say to the President, I thank you and it has been my pleasure to serve the American people, and you as Commander in Chief. And then, in appreciation, hand him a box.

And then the President withdraws Osama's head from the box!!!

Yeah, it's a little gimmicky, but it would absolutely rock.

UPDATE: Kinda like this...(thanks be to Allah).

The Infinite Cat Project. This would have been a $100M IPO in 1999.

Somehow, the "Kitties for Kerry" thing just figures.

A frequent topic here has been the division and polarization between right and left. pittpilot has been on it the most, and his posts on the topic get more comments than just about any other. I used to think that the division was bad, but not the worst we've had. Then in the comments to this post, I decided that, no, it was just about as bad as we've seen since the Civil War. I am going to flip flop, or flap flip, or something on that. The 1960's and the early 70's - let's just call it the Vietnam era - were much worse. Political leaders and activists were getting killed. National Guard troops were policing riots, and shooting college students. Radicals were bombing government facilities. Cities were literally in flames. And no matter what happens in NYC this week, I don't think it can compare to the Democrat convention in 1968. That was division and polarization. The level of rhetoric now may be high, but the gunplay is at a minimum. That's got to be a good thing.

But now the thing that made the era so divisive - Vietnam - is back, with a vengeance. The focus of the Swiftboat argument will soon move from the medals to Kerry's testimony before the Senate (it is already moving that way). And the defense of that from the Democrats will be that Kerry was right. And right to do what he did. And then there will be a whole lot more than just 150 Swiftboat Vets angry about Kerry and his candidacy.

For one brief shining moment, even Bill Clinton was saying that the men who fought in Vietnam were virtuous, and protecting our nation. Now, all of the ugliness of that era is being imported into our current one. Let's hope we still keep the gunplay to a minimum.

But he does speak Spanish:

Voto si, y despues voto no. (Applause.) Muy claro. (Laughter.)

Wow, talk about your ravings of a madman.

Item 1: Najaf. Allah thinks that the most recent iteration of ceasefire and negotiation with al-Sadr is a big win - for al-Sadr. Stratfor thinks this is not so:

Events in An Najaf are moving to their logical conclusion. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has returned to Iraq and, in spite of recent heart treatment, is showing remarkable resiliency -- and is leading a march on An Najaf designed to bring a peaceful end to the rising of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. That is what will happen, if all goes according to script.

We assume there to be a script since: (a) al-Sistani chose to go to London for non-emergency surgery when the U.S. attack began; (b) was permitted to leave London as things moved to their climax (his plane could have been found to have serious engine problems just before takeoff); and (c) was cleared to land in Kuwait and drive back into Iraq. We would think that if the United States and Britain expected problems, they would have found ways of delaying his return.

The script is therefore that he will march to An Najaf, accept the return of the Imam Ali shrine from al-Sadr, make a speech suitably condemning the United States for occupying Iraq and demanding its withdrawal from An Najaf and other cities -- and proceed to implement a deal giving his followers prominent roles throughout the Iraqi government. Obviously, things could go wrong. Al-Sistani could decide not to play according to the script; al-Sadr might decide it would be healthier for him to hold on to the An Najaf mosque; or uncontrolled violence could suddenly break out without any real planning. All of this is possible, but the most likely outcome is an end to the standoff and al-Sistani moving into closer collaboration with the Americans.

This leaves the Iranians in as bad a shape as they can be in Iraq, with all of their plans shot to pieces -- and even their control over Iraqi Shia gone.

No link because it is from the newsletter.

I think that it is true that we have thwarted Iran's influence in Iraq thus far - the Stratfor piece goes on to speculate what they will do, because they have been beaten, but they have not given up.

But I also think that Sistani has been the most likely winner in Iraq all along. Chalabi may or may not have been the US favorite at one time, but he is clearly now damaged goods. Allawi could have only come out as Prime Minister in the necessarily undemocratic selection process the UN set up for the interim government - he's a former Ba'athist who is a mostly secular Sunni. That's two strikes right there. The Shi'a are the majority, the head Shi'ite is the most likely winner in a popularly chosen government.

The President has been saying from the beginning that the result will be a government chosen by the Iraqi people - surely even the US State Department has figured out that is going to mean the first elected leader will be a Shi'ite, and if it isn't Sistani himself, someone blessed by him.

Settling the Sadr issue only helps in that regard. So the idea that this went according to script is not all that farfetched - an neither is the idea that it is indeed a win for our side.

Item 2: Swifties and Kerry I haven't really done much on this here because so many others are way more on top of it, and that is because I have been largely ambivalent about the whole thing. I do think that it is important that John Kerry has inflated his history in Vietnam, as it tells us something about him, and I think that the Swiftboat Vets are just the ones to make that case. Glenn Reynolds says that the media coverage of it will end up being the death of the big media, essentially, and that they will focus on the medal portion of what the Swiftvets have said in order to make the issue complicated and murky. But just as Kerry invites scrutiny of his Vietnam service by making an issue of it, the Swiftboat vets invite scrutiny of the medals story by making an issue of it. Going after Kerry's stories about Cambodia and his anti-war activism is well inbounds. Contesting Kerry's medals, however, is to me, a bridge too far. Just as I would expect that the fact that President Bush received an honorable discharge from the Guard means that he was not actually AWOL or a deserter, I expect that the medals that Kerry received from the Navy should be the last word on it (this is indeed the latest set of talking points from the Democrats - the part about the Navy, not the part about Bush). Kerry may have embellished his story a bit in the recommendation for the award, but the point is that Admiral Zumwalt awarded the medal, not Lt. (j.g.) Kerry. On the face of it, a Silver Star seems like a little much for killing one of the enemy, which is how the story was related in the recommendation for award. There has been some talk that the Silver Star was awarded in an attempt to boost morale among the Swift Boat personnel, and if so, the decision to do so still lies at Zumwalt's feet. Kerry was the recipient of that bit of grade inflation. And if it weren't him, it would have been someone else.

I have written before of medals when PFC Lynch was awarded a Bronze Star. I wrote then:

And I don't begrudge anyone medals - hell, they don't cost anything in the grander scheme of things, and it is the least the service can do for its members. It can't pay them more, and can't necessarily promote them, but they can give them colored bits of cloth they can wear on their uniform.

And if that colored bit of cloth helps bring young people like PFC Lynch and SGT Miller (who received the Silver Star) into the service and recognize them for what they have done and help them feel proud of it, then let's go ahead and hand them out like candy.

Don't get me wrong, they can't be given for nothing, or their perceived value goes away. But if there is something there worth recognizing, then let's go ahead and do so.

Another medal story I have: some of my soldiers deployed to Northern Iraq as part of Operation Provide Comfort. Three were injured while clearing a minefield. A boobytrap had been set on a cleared path that they had been using for a while to enter and exit the minefield. Their recommendation for the Purple Heart was at first denied because by policy, OPC was a humanitarian effort, not a peacekeeping action or a combat action. But quite clearly, they had been injured, severely, by the actions of hostile forces. After some time, official policy declared Northern Iraq a combat zone and the Purple Hearts were authorized. The exact same event, but due to a bureaucratic decision, at one point it was not worth a Purple Heart, and at another it was. The award of medals is not consistent throughout time or place. I don't see any profit in revisiting medals awarded almost 35 years ago. I don't think that many Vietnam Veterans would necessarily want a review of all awards given in that time frame merely because of the politics of the moment.

UPDATE: Yeah, what he said.

I was going to have an item 3, about President Bush and 527's. I have seen or heard a number of folks disappointed that the President would decry all of the 527 ads. My thought, earlier, was that Bush was not necessarily against the fact that people were acting within the law to advocate political opinions, but that the political opinions being advocated were unnecessarily ugly, and that it was the ugliness that he objected to. That those ads stirring up ugly should be stopped, not that they must be stopped. But before I could write about that, I find that the President is trying to sue to get them stopped. So there is no Item 3.

Again, while channel surfing, I alight on Matthews' show, because Laura Ingraham is on the show, so I stop (because she is highly intelligent, hello!) and Matthews says something to hte effect that Kerry really has to get the subject changed about Vietnam (without laying the blame on Kerry for making it the subject) and says he ought to do something like announce that he is gay.

Kinda funny, actually. But it shows that Matthews has moved from the attack the attackers mode to avoid it, let's move on mode.

Plus, given the post-gay bounce that McGreevey got, it is probably worth a few points. Could you see that, a gay American speech, and how it affected him in the military, and see, you can be gay and be a hero in Vietnam....

Oh, right, he's supposed to be changing the subject from that.

This is about the most cogent paragraph I have read on the state of our politics in quite a while.

"American democracy is not threatened by radical or unprecedented or demogogic views, or by any prospective mechanical failure in the system. It is instead suffering from the inability of either political party or the media to speak openly about what is going on."

For almost a month now, the Presidential campaign has been about Bush's National Guard Service, or Kerry's medals.

Have we all gone mad? Do we collectively not want to discuss what the hell is going on in the world?

For instance. What are we doing about Iraq? Are things going well there? What is the next step? What are we going to do about Syria? How is that Iranian nuclear weapons program coming? North Korea, anyone? These seem to be pressing issues to me

But the leading story seems to be that Amber Frey offered to pretend to be pregnant to trap Scott Peterson?

I am honestly at a point where I don't know what to think anymore. What the hell is wrong with our elites? The media appears to have thrown all semblance of objectivity to the wind, the Democrats are straight up nuts, and the Republicans are like the blind leading the blind.

So quick, someone tell me everything is just hunky dory. I'll be over here revising this memo.

Well, I'm not, but I saw Joe Piscopo on Cavuto's show, and he was asked about running for governor in New Jersey. People have been talking about it seriously, and Piscopo has formed an exploratory committee. I would bet it would happen.

In the interview, he seemed to be a totally decent person (that may disqualify him from being a Democrat candidate!), and though he wouldn't talk about policies, he said many times that it was "all about the children," which sounds a lot like Arnold when he got started, come to think of it.

I don't know if the celebrity candidate thing is a trend or not, but one thing is sure - Piscopo can't be a bigger joke than McGreevey.

From Dusk til Dawn is on HBO at 10:30. Yeah, its got Clooney in it, it's got Tarantino (but he gets killed - twice!), but it also has Salma Hayek.

Mmmm, tequila!

Time was that Senator Kerry made the point that he had always fought for this country, starting with his time in Vietnam. His heroic service was the centerpiece of his speech at the Democrat convention. And now:

Mr. Kerry's aides said this latest advertisement, as well as a speech he would give in New York on Tuesday, was intended to move the debate away from a discussion about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service and to focus it instead on what they contended was a history of dirty tricks by Republicans around Mr. Bush and his father over the years.

Recall back in the debate over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security the whole issue of unionized workers and hiring/firing rules? That was the issue that tripped up Max Cleland, not his patriotism.

At any rate, the union is more interested in work rules than in Homeland Security. Who could have seen that coming?

Our one is completely broken.

Take the latest John F'ing Kerry story. Kerry is complaining to the FEC that Bush aides are behind the Swift Boat Vet thing. Kerry's campaign wants to create the impression that the Bush/Cheney campaign is behind the whole thing.

"We want people to understand that this is simply an effort by the Bush campaign to get others to do their dirty work for them," senior advisor Tad Devine said in an interview, echoing words Kerry used Thursday. "It's going to be a consistent effort on our part to point out the truth and make sure that the president be held accountable."

Kerry also wanted to have Bush denounce the Swift Boat Vet's Ad

Couple of things there Senator Kerry, if I may.

1) May we check into your connections to Moveon.org?

2) Oh, now you have a problem with the Bush AWOL talk? That's funny, didn't hear you denouncing Michael Moore before, nor denouncing moveon.org before? If I wasn't such a trusting soul, I would swear this is an inside play on your part.

3) You made your Vietnam service an issue. No one else did. You! I could care less about your service in Vietnam.

4) Are you ready for the next salvo?

Senator Kerry, it's time to put up or shut up.

And the only reason he doesn't have to, is because of the pitiful excuse we call the Mainstream media.

Governor McGreevey is a "gay American." His first wife was Canadian. His second is Portugese. And his, umm, is there a word for mistress with gays? - that guy Cipel is Israeli.

Seriously, a whole country full of people of both sexes, and he has to outsource his partners?

Heard on the radio that Kerry was in North Carolina today saying that job losses here were the result of the Bush tax cuts.

Can someone explain to me under any economic ideology, even Marxism, that lower taxes for anyone equals fewer jobs?

In a bloggy way. What a great description of Hardball. Chris Matthews is every bit as poisonous to politics as Carville and Begala (how self-referentially bloggy is that?) I didn't see that segment, but flipping channels last night, I saw part of a segment where Matthews had Thurlow on the phone, and he was badgering him about whether it was okay with him if George Bush - who didn't go to Vietnam - criticized the service of someone who did go to Vietnam.

As if that was what was going on. It was Thurlow (among other Vietnam veterans) criticizing Kerry, not the President. And Thurlow kept making that point. Oddly enough, Matthews never asked whether it was okay with Thurlow - a Vietnam vet - if it was okay for Vietnam vets to lie about their service. Something that there is simply no question about with Kerry. Even if it turns out that not everything the Swift Boat Veterans have alleged is true, even if some guy involved once coached George H.W. Bush for a VP debate in the 80's, the bald-faced truth is that for 30 years Kerry has been making up a story about being in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968. It isn't just a matter of getting grid coordinates on a map a little off, or the date, it is a matter of making up a story that isn't true and imbuing huge political significance to it.

I don't think that even Democrats would argue that if President Bush had done such a thing that it would be a huge, huge story. And yet, for the NYT, the story is not that "Kerry, the Democratic candidate who has pegged his Presidential aspirations on his Vietnam service has been dishonest about aspects of that service," but rather that Republicans are involved with exposing that.

Glenn Reynolds reprints an email which reads in part "my point being that if the public loses faith in our capacity for basic objectivity and fairness, the public will find/create other means of collecting information." Too late, I think.

Found a good BBQ place! Turned up through AOL's Digital Cities, a recommendation for Bullock's Bar B Cue over in Durham. It was a 45 minute drive, but it was good eating. $8.50 for a huge plate of pulled pig, 3 sides, and all the hush puppies and sweet tea you could consume. Not "lite" fare by any stretch.

You might think that since there is absolutely nothing else going on, the media might sieze on a story like a Presidential candidate fabricating part of his military history. And then sending out a fellow senator who also has been caught lying about his service history to call the Vice President a coward.

You might.

I am guessing because it is August, and there is slow news (the big news in the Kobe and Laci cases is that there is no news), that some conservatives are starting to get antsy about W, and they are starting go negative on Iraq. I've noticed it several places, but I was reading NRODT and they had an editorial piece basically saying that the absent the war in Iraq, W would be trouncing Kerry, and so they were kind of, almost, backtracking on the support, though not entirely, like William F. Buckley. And Rich Lowry points out a Republican Congressman backtracking on his support.

I think these people are wrong. Not because everything is peachy keen in Iraq, but because it isn't so that absent Iraq, bush would be sitting pretty in the polls. I don't know that the polls are really all that accurate anymore, but they seem to say on domestic issues, he trails Kerry, and it is only in the war on terror that he has a significant strength. If we hadn't gone into Iraq, I don't think that it is a given that things would be better. It isn't like all the troops would be back in the barracks smoking and joking. They would be somewhere, doing something. And if AQ wasn't busy in Iraq, wouldn't they be focusing their attention here? And if the more things they attempt here, the better chance they have of succeeding. Maybe - maybe - we would not have lost a thousand troops in Iraq. And maybe - maybe - we would have lost thousands more civilians here at home. And certainly Libya would still be rogue, and still working its nuclear program - and buying its stuff from Abdul Q. Khan's atomic blackmarket.

So yes, everything has a cost - no doubt the fact that we haven't had a clean victory in Iraq that we can point to has had its effect on the President's popularity. But everything has opportunity costs, too. Had we not done Iraq, we would have done something else. Syria? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Something else, for sure. And that would have had its difficulties, too.

So yippie-ki-yay, motherf***er. Cowboy up.

Somewhere along the way I saw someone alluding to the German reaction to President Bush's announcement of troop redeployments being like that of a battered woman - wanting us to leave, and then when we say okay, we'll leave, begging us to stay. I think that gets the relationship backward. The US is the battered woman in the German (and Korean) relationship. They treat us like crap, we love them all the same. And then when we finally say enough is enough, we're moving out, they are all like "don't leave we really love you!"

This is familiar enough - we went through it with the Phillipines and I recall it being that way with Greece.

Then I just read something else that had Kerry complaining about the troop redeployments in front of the VFW, when just a few weeks ago he was saying he would draw down troops in Iraq and pull them out of Germany and Korea. I guess he was for the idea before he was against it. (That one turned out to be Hugh Hewitt. Remember how Stephanopoulos was complaining about Lexis-Nexis - Kerry's guys are going to hate blogs!)

The Mrs. had her procedure, and the exploratory found nothing bad, and she is fine but laid up for a couple of days.

As expected, my customer wasn't ready and I wasted today on site - I wanted to wait until tomorrow to travel because of the surgery. And on my flight today, the pilot forgot to show up - way to go United Express contract carrier Air Wisconsin! Took them almost 2 hours to find a new one.

Oh, and the place where I had the disappointing barbecue experience - the locals say that's the place to go. I may be changing my tune on which Carolina barbecue is the better.

Body of text not as long as sidebar, which is sort of my measure of effectiveness on blogging. Have to work on it some.

Congrats to pittspilot for getting over the hump, and exiting liberal hell!

In that same vein, I just got accepted to a master's program at George Washington University, and look forward to it. Hard to juggle with travel for work, but I'll make it happen. Program in Crisis, Emergency, and Risk Management is right up my alley for background and work.

Mrs. Blaster going in for a little outpatient surgery tomorrow, a little exploratory work. If you are a praying type, add her in your thoughts - God will know who you mean by Mrs. Blaster. He knows everything.

Worst part of that, of course, is that I have to leave tomorrow to travel for work. We were aware of that possibility and have prepared for it and we are blessed with good friends who are helping out watching Junior blaster. But I would still rather be here. But have to keep a roof over our heads, too.

And since I am travelling, looking for more recommendations. Going back to Raleigh, NC, where I had a seriously disappointing barbecue experience. The DC area seems to think Memphis has the monopoly on barbecue - having grown up in South Carolina, I know it ain't true. Though I actually prefer NC barbecue to SC barbecue. And if none of that makes any sense to you, well, I can't help that you are uncultured. So I am in need of recommendations for BBQ in/around Raleigh, NC. The recommendations for Seattle were much appreciated.

Been a long time since we had some WMD news, but the ISG is still on the job. More intelligence that Saddam's WMD went to Syria.

Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.

The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

That would be one heck of an October surprise. My theory on this has been that we are trying to get Syria to do a Libya.

Stories popping up that the US is about to change our troop deployment posture, and that the result is that we will pull back some 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia. This is a manifestly good thing (and to note, I called for it in March of last year). We have been maintaining troops in old Cold War positions, and that war has been over for more than a dozen years. We've got a new one, now. And a soldier acting as a tripwire in South Korea is better employed killing terrorists where they are.

Of course, we've been telegraphing this for a while. And we are finally moving on it. Not everyone is happy with it, but its a good thing nonetheless. There is much talk of our military being stretched too thin. Well, part of that is that a goodly portion of it is still based to protect Germany from the now non-existent Soviet Union. Germany and Korea are static requirements, and conflicts such as the WOT are dynamic requirements. The more we have devoted to static requirements, the less we have for the dynamic.

If Germany can't be bothered to assist us in Iraq, have trouble fielding a brigade for Afghanistan, then their troops are best suited to defending themselves.

Well, The family and I are finally set up in Scottsdale Arizona. Arizona is pretty cool. For instance, not 2 miles away, is a beautiful indoor range that is decorated in such a manner as to put top flight golf clubs to shame. And they rent machine guns. Heh.

I am also starting to feel a little better about the President. I think he did a great job againt....errrr on Larry King Live last night. He was well spoken, relaxed, and confident. Very direct and on the money. It was also plain that Laura could barely stand to be in the same room as Mr. King, which only makes me like her more.

Last thing, as far as the Bar results go, not until November.

In any event, I hope to be posting more regularly. I am starting my career as a lawyer on Monday, so we will have to see.

Ordered The Siege from Netflix and watched it last night. Very strange watching this 1998 film today. Seeing the World Trade Center looming in the background over Brooklyn.

Despite the Hollywood stuff about who the bad guys really are, it is kind of spooky seeing how things might have been post-9/11, and important to see that it wasn't. But I have to think that today, Denzell Washington isn't the good guy.

Weird. Watch it.

Glenn Reynolds has been the indispensible blogger on the Kerry in Cambodia thing. This story will break one way or another - Kerry either told the truth about Cambodia or he didn't. If it turns out he was telling the truth, it will be a deathblow to the Bush campaign, as it will appear that Bush supporters - and there is no doubt that the Swift Boat Veterans are - are willing to lie to smear an honorable record. And if he wasn't telling the truth, then it will be a deathblow to his campaign, because he has been lying about it for 30 years and he has been trying to smear the Swift Boat Veterans for calling him on it.

But I think Reynolds is wrong on this point: "And Tom Maguire wants the military records released. It seems to me that the Kerry people could clear this up pretty quickly, if they did that." While I do think he should release his records since he demanded that President Bush do the same, I don't think it will clear anything up. Your records don't necessarily say everywhere you went while in the service, especially in combat. My personnel records don't say anything about me going to the Ivory Coast or Egypt or Yugoslavia, but I did., and that was in peacetime. And I especially don't think that the Navy would put a record of an illegal excursion into Cambodia in writing. In a broader sense, it is plausible that he was in Cambodia - I know hinky stuff happens and doesn't get recorded. I suppose this opens up a third outcome for this - Kerry could come out and say that he was there, and demand that his accusers prove the negative that he wasn't - but he would have to be darn sure that he was there. If he does that, I think the story withers on the vine without a deathblow to either side.

It has been surprising to me that Senator Kerry made Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. It was over 30 years ago, and he made his fame as an anti-war activist. I suppose that the reason for this was to contrast his Vietnam era service with President Bush's as a proxy for the war on terror. A decorated combat veteran vice an Air Guardsman who had a spotty record of attendance - the records would then transfer to this war in a favorable way for Kerry.

But the American electorate have proven time and again that they don't really care about military service in their elected officials. For example, President Bush, a decorated torpedo bomber pilot in WWII was defeated by Bill Clinton, who famously had avoided service without even bothering with serving in the National Guard. President Clinton then went on to defeat Bob Dole, a decorated combat veteran of WWII. George W. Bush defeated John McCain, a decorated Vietnam POW, and then went on to defeat (don't start!) Al Gore, who did serve in Vietnam.

The made up controversy over George W. Bush's Guard service is spent, and has been over and done for a while. So again, surprising that Kerry would try to make that the centerpiece.

But he has, and it has an effect on the election - good, bad, and ugly.

The Good

John Kerry has rehabilitated Vietnam. The official stance of the Democrat Party now is support of Vietnam Veterans. Kerry spoke more - much more - of his 4 months of service in Vietnam than of his years as an anti-war activist. Either he believes that the service is more admirable than the opposition, or he recognizes that the public values the service more than the opposition. Either way, it is a significant change for the Democrat Party from even earlier this year. In his acceptance speech, Kerry said this: "I defended this country as a young man..." He described his service in Vietnam as defending the country. That's a good thing.

The Bad

Kerry has made Vietnam not only his centerpiece, but his defensive shield. It is kind of a joke that he is constantly invoking Vietnam as his answer for every issue, but the joke came from the truth. By couching an issue in Vietnam, he places it off limits. Noone can question Vietnam, or anyone who served there. John McCain has joined him in this position.

The Ugly

And so we come to the Swift Boat Veterans. The situation is ugly. I don't think there is any profit in going back to 35 year old medals awarded and saying "he shouldn't have gotten them." President Bush received an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard, that should settle the issue. The Navy awarded the medals to Kerry, that should settle the issue.

The Swift Boat Veterans are suddenly exempt from the no Vietnam veteran can be questioned zone of protection. A bit of ugliness will no doubt visit upon them soon.

But what could be really ugly is that the main point right now is not that John Kerry did not do some heroic things - it is quite clear that he did, Jim Rassman is not mistaken about that. The main point right now is something that Kerry has claimed numerous times, and that is having been in Cambodia in his Swift boat Christmas of 1968. The Swift Boat Veterans say this is untrue. The results of this conflict will be ugly, indeed.

Gotta go to Seattle tomorrow. I have Starbucks here and Cobain blew his head off, so what's out there of interest?

UPDATE: Hey, thanks for the recommendations in the comments! I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight today on the way in from the airport. How bout good places to eat?

Let's put that in perspective.

In the 40 minutes between the second plane striking the WTC and the plane striking the Pentagon, John Kerry sat, unable to think.

In those same 40 minutes, President Bush spoke to the Vice President, the director of the FBI, the National Security Advisor, and the governor of New York; addressed the nation; and rushed to Air Force One.

And he read a book.

Except his isn't made up. Go read over at Mullings.

There has been a lot of talk about all of the anger on the Left. I think all of their crap has been pissing of the Right for a long time now. I mean, if you've ever seen Rich Galen on TV, he's the nicest guy. But they made him mad. A smackdown is a comin'.

John Kerry follows Michael Moore's lead on the "seven minutes."

"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it."

However, while we cannot know what President Kerry would have done, we do know what Senator Kerry did.

KING: Where were you on 9/11?

HEINZ KERRY: You know, it's very interesting. I landed at National Airport less than 12 hours before, coming from Pennsylvania, where I was doing a prescription drugs thing -- meeting. And I came in from Pittsburgh, landed at National, and that's the last time I landed at National for quite a while.

KING: How'd you hear about it?

HEINZ KERRY: I was at home in Washington. I had just come in and I got a call...

KERRY: I think I called.

HEINZ KERRY: And they said, look at the TV. I looked at the TV and I couldn't believe it.

KING: Where were you?

KERRY: I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting -- we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.

Time between second plane hitting WTC and Pentagon = time spent not thinking = 40 minutes.

Spotted in The Corner.